Institutional capital flooded suburban markets as the pandemic shifted workers' ideas about where they wanted to live, work, and play. But will it continue? 

"I think it was a responsible trend," said Douglas Schwartz of JP Morgan Asset Management at this week's GlobeSt Multifamily conference in Los Angeles. "It's smart for institutional money to follow the jobs. Now there's a lot more supply in those markets so they'll have a tougher time going forward, but it will even out in the next two or three years. At the end of the day, you have to go after growth, and the Southeast is growing a lot faster than the rest of the country."

Cityview CEO Sean Burton cautions that "supply does matter," noting that in many markets where developers swooped in during the onslaught of the pandemic, job growth may not keep pace to absorb those units. He says Cityview prefers major metro areas with strong job growth and jobs that pay good wages – and that includes California, a state that's increasingly foregone by developers in favor of markets across the Sun Belt.